NEITHER HERE NOR THERE (Review)

 

Neither Here nor There (Review)

Having grown up in the beautiful Vale of the Leven in the 60s and having worked there in the 70s, this book was of special interest to me. My father worked as a boilermaker/plater in Dennys’s shipyard, Dumbarton around the same time as one of my brothers once worked for the Lennox Herald as a reporter/sub-editor. My mother was from ‘old’ Bonhill.

The book’s title is self-explanatory of its contents: Neither Here nor There - Migration: Irish and Scots in Dumbarton and the Vale of Leven 1855-1900 by CG Docherty. As one would expect, the book contains lots of numbers and statistics about the influx of migrants to the area, data regarding their housing and housing situations, (ten a room tenements etc.) and commentary on their places of employment, wages and working conditions. Sources include census records from those times.

The fast-flowing River Leven running through the Vale of Leven from Loch Lomond to the River Clyde lent itself well to the textile and shipbuilding industries that were the big attractions for migrants to the area during the years the book deals with – mostly women to the Vale and men to Dumbarton (see e.g., pgs. 169-70). As an oversimplification, it was the cloth of the Vale with its related bleaching, dyeing, printing, weaving, etc. versus the heavy metal industry with its related red-hot forges and furnaces, riveting, pealing hammers, etc. of Dumbarton.

Though the stats can sometimes be a challenge for those who don’t “do” numbers, the author, methodically but eloquently, delightfully adds to the pot pinches of poetic prose, as he intelligently interacts with the voluminous facts and findings. (This book is no slapped together makeshift raft built by weans for sailing doon the Leven on. With intentions of making it to Dumbarton, a mate and I did this onetime and managed to float down the Leven from Balloch to just beyond the ‘Stuckie’ Bridge before overhanging branches capsised our jerry-built raft! Anyway, how were we supposed to get back to the Vale from Dumbarton in only our swimming trunks?!) The book’s garnered information is professionally end noted with tidy references from whence it was sourced and is neatly set at the end of each chapter. There are some old b/w photos and maps, a helpful index and a Bibliography.

Why Vale folk are referred to as ‘jeely eaters’ is explained:

Whether using natural or artificial products, the dyeing process produced harmful liquids and unpleasant, often noxious, vapours. Those who worked in this industry faced hazardous conditions daily – often with serious consequences. Female print workers were known as ‘jeely eaters’ because their hands were stained permanently red. p. 27.  

One of the ‘Sons of the Rock’ went down with the Titanic:
              

Roderick Chisholm, born in Dumbarton 1868 … was one of nine men selected for the ‘Guarantee Team’ that would sail on the Titanic’s maiden voyage, none of whom survived its sinking.” pgs. 119-20.

Referring to an article in the Lennox, we see something of the discouraging disparagements Irish migrants had to contend with:

[I]n 1864, the Lennox Herald reported that Irish illiteracy was the reason why houses had to be given numbers in Renton, the village with the heaviest concentration of Irish in the Vale of Leven. p. 141.

Though I was witness to sectarianism in the 70s, it was mostly in the form of friendly banter regarding the ‘Auld Firm’, i.e., Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic, (with Celtic FC, of course, being equated with the Irish Catholics and Rangers FC with the Scots Protestants). Docherty alerts us that a version of ‘fake news’ was also around way back then. For he goes on to write:

In towns with identifiable ‘Irish areas’, reportage in local newspapers ensured that there was much attention paid to disputes between the Irish and the Scots and amongst the Irish themselves. Whereas evidence of cooperation, particularly amongst industrial labourers who worked and lived beside each other, was not newsworthy. The Scots and Irish were not in constant conflict with each other, even if some newspapers gave the impression otherwise. pgs. 146-47.

Yet, perhaps paradoxically, the author goes on to inform the reader, “There were employers who expressly refused to hire Irish Catholics, a situation that persisted well into the twentieth century.” p. 175. Like the ‘common old working chap’ in the ‘I Belong to Glasgow’ song, perhaps the perspective on sectarianism in the Vale and Dumbarton changed with ‘a couple of drinks on a Saturday’!

The River Leven will be happy now that the bleach and dyes of the textile and print factories no longer mix together with effluence in the eddies of its waters. Though in our own day the closing of the textile and shipbuilding industries along the stagnant backwaters of her banks have left pockets of depression in the Vale and Dumbarton, however, much of the effluence has been transformed into affluence. Having become part of the Scottish diaspora in the mid-Seventies, I am always impressed on return visits when I see how far we have come.

The stats, facts, and figures so capably verbalised in Neither Here nor There for the years of 1855-1900 is, of course, now all water under the bridge. However, it gives us an informed and detailed sense of who we are and where we have come from. This book has done the Vale and Dumbarton a great service and ought to be on the bookshelf of every home there. We may be neither here nor there but we’ve come a long way. Thank you CG Docherty for writing this part of our history so readably.

RETIREES

                                                                            Retirees

Picture from Web

Looking back over his 30 years working as the Lord’s apostle, Paul wrote, ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith’ (2 Tim. 4:7). Paul was, of course, talking about his life ending here. However, not to be overly dramatic, there are some similarities here to becoming a retiree. Years ago, while working in a railway repair shop, I saw a few retirements. The retiree would be presented with a gold watch, thanked for his lifetime dedication to the railway, and we would applaud. Then, before you knew it, ‘Did you hear that old Trashcan Bill has just died?’ No sooner were they a retiree, than it was their funeral. 

‘What funeral plans do you have for retirement?’ Some people can’t seem to adjust to major life changes.

One of my many reasons for leaving my railway job in Canada to move to Australia was an aversion to the ‘gold watch to pine box’ transition. Excuse the pun, but a dead-end job was not for me! God had graciously converted me just before I moved to Australia. Like every other new convert, I wanted to make sure everyone else got converted too! Australia looked like fertile soil. Of course, with a young family to feed, I also needed a job, hopefully, not a dead-end job. After much study to become a Presbyterian minister some 30 years ago, and after also becoming an Australian army chaplain, I subsequently became a retiree. Retiring from fulltime army, I then did another year working a couple of days a week for Army Reserve. So, my transition to retirement was smoother. The ADF did offer me some help to transition. I had been a writer/author for years, so ‘reinventing’ myself was easy. However, back to fighting the good fight, finishing the race and keeping the faith. Becoming a retiree can be alike running a marathon. You see the finish line approaching, but you’re spent. You use up whatever adrenalin and cortisol you have in reserve to get you over the finish line. Once crossed, you collapse in a heap – and hopefully recover! Of course, there’re are those who take all this in their stride. But, as an army psychologist asked me as I approached the ‘finish line’ exhausted, ‘Are you Superman? No? Then why don’t you let us help you?’ Isn’t that a lot of our trouble? As Christians we can be so busy giving of ourselves, that we neglect ourselves.

Paul adds, ‘I have kept the faith.’ He fought the good fight and ran the race, not for himself, but for Jesus. Isn’t that why we keep going as Christians? We do it in gratitude to our Lord and Saviour. There is a reward, but the subtilty is that it is not for the reward that we fight the fight and run the race. It’s as Job says, ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him’ (Job 13:15a). That’s keeping the faith! During our working lives the mantra is ‘soldier on!’ It’s when we become a retiree, we begin to really feel all our aches and pains. We now have more time to discover how busted and broken we really are! Ah, but then there’s that reward for keeping the faith. As Paul said, ’Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the Day, and not to me only, but also to all who have loved His appearing’ (2 Tim. 4:8). The ‘crown of righteousness’ is worth more than every Olympic gold medal together. The Olympic gold medallists earned their reward through arduous physical training and winning the race on the day. However, like our faith, our reward is a gift – paid for by Jesus, ‘the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God’ (Heb. 12:2).